BA Bonus Miles twist

I guess we all knew that BA is offering a 30% bonus on hotel points transferred to BA miles, which is good until Feb 29.

However, in an email from BA, they noted that Starpoints can be converted until March 31 and still get the bonus.

This is good news for me, since I'm in the process of adding an SPG AMEX to the rest of the members of my BA Household Account, and I was pretty sure the points wouldn't post before the end of February. Looks like now I have a shot at picking up the bonus.

Maybe everyone else knew about this, but it was news to me, and very welcome news at that.

North American members only. Its a great deal - I converted 60K SPG points to 97.5K BA miles....thats almost 4 RTs MFU'd from WT+ to Club World ^

Existing thread in the BA forum...miles post to BA every Tuesday so its pretty quick.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=763949

Yeah, I knew about the thread. The point of the post was that I wasn't aware that the deadline was March 31. For the rest of the hotel chains (and I was planning on doing a dump of Marriott points), the deadline is Feb. 29.

Besides, not everyone who might benefit from this hangs out in the BA forum. I got there originally because I took advantage of the old Diner's Club deal with 100% bonus (sigh - them were the days) and, even though I had never flown BA before, I wound up with 2 F returns almost entirely due to the DC/BA bonus.

Nowadays, 30% is considered pretty good, especially when SPG will give you 25% (20K SPG -> 25K miles -> 32.5K BA miles with this promo). Put it all together and you've got a 62.5% bonus.

Not new .... it's on BA's website since some time:

Good news for me^. I transfered today 40,000 points ... and the Terms and Conditions quote:

I understand most of the terms in this post, except "MFU'd from WT+ to Club World" - does that mean just using the miles on mileage partners?

MFU = Miles For Upgrade or upgrading from a paid ticket in one class to the next highest

WT+ = World Traveller Plus, BA's Premier Economy class

Club World = BA's Business Class

Gotta love those acronyms

MFU = Miles For Upgrades
WT+ = World Traveller Plus on BA (like Economy Plus)
Club World = Business Class on BA

As an example, it only costs 25k miles to MFU both outbound and inbound, from WT+ to Club World on a BA TATL journey like ORD-LHR-ORD.

Many people think this is an extremely efficient use of BA miles.

*deleted*

Heh, yeah, also tough still being a bit fo a n00b Thanks for your help!

So you have to have the WT+ ticket already, cash paid for it or something I assume.

I'm trying to figure out the most efficient use of SPG points for a vacation and flights to Europe from XNA (NW Arkansas). I know Cathay was devalued, and the problem with BA is taxes are $350-$400 for the tickets we'd need. Not sure what to do.

I always use the "book and upgrade" feature on ba.com. That way, in NorthAmericanAirlines-speak, your "upgrade is cleared at time of booking".

I beleive in theory you can book a WT+ then call in to apply your miles and get an upgrade, but then you have to be sure of availability and that you initially bought the correct fare class. All-in-all I find it easier to do it all at once on the website.

I am assuming you are planning for a party of 2. I'd say that BA J tickets are still a good value for money, even with the taxes - but I do seem to remember reading somewhere (was it gleff's blog?) that Asia Miles used to book BA flights were better value. Can't quite remember though - you might want to check out gleff's blog or just PM gleff.

Good luck!

Actually family of 4. I believe I read a post about Cathay having a good conversion, but I believe that was before a devaluation. I'll have to find the reference to AsiaMiles in Gleff's blog.

Thanks for the response and advice, nigelloring!

Here's the link to the blog:
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...ansfer-promos/

Thanks, Lutz. I do recall reading that and would have posted there, but I do not have knowledge of a simple subscription method to view responses.

I think for business class, it certainly makes sense to use Cathay AsiaMiles. However, it's a lot of points for a family - 65k SPG points for each ticket (65k x 4) is 260,000 SPG points! (Possibly more, as we wouldn't just be flying from NYC to London, and I think the award is based on mileage). So the reason I think BA might be better under this 30% promotion is that we'll just fly coach (50k BA Miles from anywhere US to most of western Europe) which will only require a little more than 120,000 SPG points... so in this case (4 people, coach, BA promo) it seems I do not have a better value alternative.

Savage25:

Thanks. You are well informed ... indeed, the BA miles showed up on Tuesday. I transfered the Starwood Points on 2/14/2008 and the BA Miles posted the next Tuesday ... that was really fast.
Thanks again for the information!